Are the switch wires black / black or black /white. From your original post I think the switch wires are black/white which is why you may have seen white-black wired together.

If you've then decided to wire it up white-white black-black you may have wired the switch in parallel which defeats the purpose of a switch i.e. you've wired power directly to the lights. The switch will need to be wired in series to be effective.